The WTO boss, who ran unopposed to lead the organisation for a second term, set out her vision to member states on Thursday. But with multilateral cooperation at an all-time low, and an incoming US administration unlikely to play by global trade rules, she’ll have a fight on her hands.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has “unfinished business” to take care of at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The Nigerian former finance chief, who became its first female director general in 2021, made the case to member states for reappointing her for a second term on Thursday, along with her priorities – and there’s plenty to choose from.
There’s a paralysed dispute settlement system that needs fixing; the second part of a fisheries subsidies deal to be concluded; agriculture talks to resuscitate; and a world to convince tomorrow’s problems won’t be overcome without a multilateral trading system and an organisation at the centre to play umpire.
Looming large over any four-year plan is also a US administration led once again by Donald Trump, who considers tariffs to be “the most beautiful word in the dictionary” but the acronym “WTO” and all that it stands for less so.
During his last term in office, Trump effectively deprived the organisation of its most important function – its ability to resolve disputes – by blocking the appointment of judges to its appellate body, which he lambasted for judicial overreach. The US president-elect has shown no sign of changing course in his second term.
His promised tariff plans, the latest announced Monday including a massive hike on goods coming into the US from Canada, Mexico and China, would flout WTO rules and “give no reason to believe that they will have any interest in reforming the WTO over the next four years”, one Geneva-based trade told Geneva Solutions.
For Okonjo-Iweala, running the global trade body at a time when security and geopolitical issues are taking precedence over economic cooperation, and multilateral organisations have been relegated to the back benches, will be a thankless task.
Several trade delegates Geneva Solutions spoke to praised her “vision” for the organisation as well as her commitment and political clout. “She is a person who carries a lot of weight and can speak eye-to-eye with many heads of state,” Guilherme Patriota, Brazil’s ambassador to the WTO, told Geneva Solutions.
“This is more important than the alternative of having a technocrat, for example, who knows all the legal intricacies of WTO agreements, but doesn’t have the vision to represent the institution at another level,” he added.
Simon Manley, the UK’s ambassador to the UN and other international organisations in Geneva, voiced Britain's support for her second term. “She has really helped give the organisation a sense of forward purpose, as well as helping it to deliver some of the most important agreements in many years," he said, citing the deal to curb harmful fisheries subsidies adopted in 2022.
If the WTO has failed to deliver many other outcomes over the last four years, the fault lies with its member states, said Mzukisi Qobo, South Africa's permanent representative to the WTO, expressing his country’s backing for her second term.
“These are highly politically intense issues, but my assessment of her as a leader is someone who is able to be in the driving seat, under enormous pressure, and she's done very well,” he told Geneva Solutions.
The process to reappoint Okonjo-Iweala has been relatively plane-sailing until now. Due to finish her term on 31 August 2025, the nomination process would normally begin only nine months before. But the process was kick-started this summer at the request of the African group, who argued it would help preparations for the WTO’s next ministerial conference in Cameroon late 2025 or early 2026.
The unofficial reason is widely believed to have been to secure her reappointment before Trump’s inauguration after the president-elect tried to block her initial appointment in 2020.
This time around, no other candidates came forward for the role before the 8 November deadline and the General Council chair, Petter Ølberg, said he would convene a special meeting on 28 and 29 November.
However Qobo said he did not see a reason at this stage for countries to object. “The organisation needs cohesiveness now more than any time before, given all this global turbulence, I don't see her position under threat in any way.”
With the prospect of a disengaged US and a World Trade Organization unable to strike any major agreements amid increasing disputes between its members, and further fragmentation of the global economy, Okonjo-Iweala is left with limited space to manoeuvre. By her own admission, “global trade is not having the best of times,” the former World Bank managing director told the BBC, conceding that rising protectionism is undermining WTO rules.
Economist Simon Evenett, a trade professor at the University of St Gallen, suggests a two-prong approach: one focused on building plurilateral agreements between clubs of countries willing to engage with the system, and the other on defensive efforts to preserve as much of the current WTO architecture as possible.
“We should not let disengaging countries from driving the rest of the system into the ground. So there's a role in preserving as much of the current system that is important as well,” he told Geneva Solutions.
Can the WTO continue to survive with a disengaged US? Evenett points out that this has been the case since 2008. “One should not overplay the positive contributions of the United States in recent years,” said, adding that the country’s share of world imports had diminished from 19.5 per cent at the turn of the century to 13.5 per cent, and with it, so has its political weight.
For the Brazilian ambassador, cooperation with the US will nevertheless remain vital and should remain a top priority for the organisation. “The WTO without the US is not something we want, because it wouldn’t be multilateral,” he said.
"There is huge value in keeping the US engaged in and committed to the WTO, even if this requires reshaping the institution to some degree in light of new realities."
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